Reignfall

Era beginning/end

The devils finally break into the material plane and invade Loom. The Bonner Boys face off against Zariel's Legion of the First Circle of Hell both with and against the Fey Court for the fate of the world.

Daryl spreads his wings wide and flies straight up at the devil legion. He blasts them with some magic and flies off hoping to draw their forces away. Instead only a few Erinyes, looking like evil armored angelic women, follow after him. He sees a massive shadow of a devil rise within the legion.   Imps and Lemures fall into Forrester Estate first. The party fights them valiantly but they just keep on coming. An Erinyes strikes Daryl hard. Indigo pulls out his shadow key and pushes it into a window in the room to open a portal to the Shadowfell. Mirian is able to maneuver across the room to grab the large crystal orb and use sending to call Daryl back to them. The party escapes into the Shadowfell.   They fall into a courtyard in some kind of massive castle on the other side. The party starts to catch their breath -- but all their hairs stand on end. A portal opens and Ia’Affratt steps into the Shadowfell. He attacks them at full power. Most of their attacks can’t even touch the swarm. As they fight, Mirian uses the crystal ball to reach out to Darakhul. Once he learns they’re in his courtyard right now, he’s on his way. Ia’Affratt mocks them. He says he is nothing compared to the Dukes of Hell or the true Archdevils. Just then Darakhul walks through a set of doors, looking taller, more regal, with hair and a crown. He casts power word kill and every single individual fire wasp drops to the ground, except for one lodged inside the Amulet of the Planes.   They question this last piece of Ia’Affratt. He tells them the devils have been ravaging their country, but now they are amassing to destroy their capital Citadel. He mocks them again, that they need the power of the amulet to return but he’s also using it to continue bringing the legion into the material plane. Danger immediately argues to destroy the amulet. They have the key they’re good. Mirian, however, wants to keep it. It’s his only way back to Vanifer in the Plane of Fire. However, nobody else agrees with him and he, reluctantly, destroys the amulet and Ia'Affratt with it.   Darakhul walks them into a great hall in his castle where Ghouls ravenously eat rotting meat. The more they eat the less rabid they become, going from normal ghouls to those almost indistinguishable from how Darakhul first looked. More "darakhuls". The original tells them he’s become the Ghoul Emperor Darakhul Nicoforus. He offers to teleport them wherever they may want to go.   Indigo argues that they should go get Emerline from the Tower of the Moon. Darakhul created her as a WMD and they need her, but that riles Mirian up more. Indigo gets to go on a side mission for his girlfriend but Mirian had to be cut off from his fiance forever. They all eventually agree to go to the tower of the moon. They thank Darakhul and tell him they owe him one. He tells them he’ll remember that.   The party appears before the Tower of the Moon and Indigo uses the crystal ball to contact Emerline. Except she sounds fine, in fact, she sounds happy. She asks where he is and, despite protests from literally everyone, Indigo tells her they’re at the tower. No sooner does he tell her than the Queen of Night and Magic and the Queen of Witches teleport to them. Or rather, between them and the tower.   Indigo draws his key and tells the group to get to the front door. He’ll pass them the key so they can escape into the material plane. They all fight the queens, but Daryl flies over them. Indigo throws him the key and he creates the portal. They tell him not to wait, so he runs through it, but then the Queen of Night and Magic casts meteor swarm on the building. The tower falls! Daryl watches from the outside as the portal collapses, leaving him alone on the mountain.   Indigo, Danger, Mirian, and Imdril crawl their way out of the rubble. Mirian finds Forrester's old notebook. They realize Hogarth is dying. The Queen of Night and Magic grabs Indigo. The Queen of Witches cast hypnotic illusion, which hypnotizes a few of the rest, mostly Hogarth. They follow it up with plane shift, which means they have to choose to follow Hogarth or not. They do, leaving Indigo with the queens.   Daryl looks around the destroyed goliath village until he finds Spirit Guide’s house and the crop of druidic kush they gave her. He starts brewing Tea of Astral Projection.   Danger, Mirian, Imdril, and Hogarth are all dropped into a square in the Underdark. Imdril takes in the new spider aesthetic in disgust. Lolth steps out from a crowd that worships her as a god. But he sees her for the little girl she really is. They all push past the crowd and run for their lives into the deep passages. Finally, they find an odd crack in the wall and slip inside.   The Queens take Indigo to the Shadowfell side of Citadel, a place they call the White City. From atop the dragon dais, they can see the city is bustling with the undead, only they move in orchestration. They’re under the control of Emerline, standing at the edge of the dais. The queens leave him there so they can fight the devils with the Moonlit King   What Mirian, Imdril, and Danger find is a cave where someone lived the formative years of their life. The walls are covered in writing calling themselves an abomination. A terrible roll of blankets in one corner, rotting food in another. This is where Meriele grew up. While Danger keeps a lookout, Imdril reckons with his own responsibility for the creation of Meriele. He called her an animal until she came back with dark skin and a dragon, and then he proclaimed her as a savior. Mirian suggests that maybe if he just saw her as a person the whole time things would be better. He nods in agreement. Breakthrough. They then see another piece of writing, about the odd cabin they found in the Underdark. She called for a place of refuge once and it came to her. It’s a safe haven that moves around the plane. They all concentrate on it and the cabin appears.   Daryl drinks his best guess at the tea of astral projection and it works. His astral body, now perceiving himself as a Dragonborn, floats in the milky astral plane. He looks around for the silver pool that will take him to the material plane, but for some reason, he’s drawn to a different gold pool. Daryl dives into it.   Danger, Mirian, Imdril, and Hogarth concentrate with all their might and open the door of the cabin. They step out onto the front lawn of Citadel Keep. Citadel is on fire. Devils attack all over. The large devil from the skies has made his presence known, and he is striking against the Queen of Night and Magic with terrifying power. Lunar Devils even attack the city, their control must have been pulled away from the Moonlit King. And on that note, Indigo senses the King, Ludomir, nearby in the half-destroyed Keep's library. There's a sense of finality in the air.   Indigo talks to Emerline. She’s so happy to see him. It turns out the Fey Lords lied when they told him they were torturing her. Instead, ‘Miss Sarastra” has been teaching Emerline how to control her powers. She thinks Emerline could become a new Fey Lord. Indigo is happy she’s alright, but he tells her they need to help save Citadel Keep. Even in the Shadowfell they can see buildings falling from the battle on the material plane. She’s scared to leave this safe place, but Indigo convinces her to go. She plane shifts them.   Daryl needs to hold up a hand for the sake of his eyes. He steps onto an alien shore. The skies are the color of sherbert, the water is completely clear, and the sand is made of tiny shining diamonds that, the longer you look at them, shine brighter and brighter. But it’s the astral figure standing at the edge of the water and holding some of that “sand” in his hand that he recognizes. Cole Mirari. Cole’s mind has deteriorated from being away from his body for so long. Daryl gets through to him and both men go to travel back to the material plane. Mirian, Danger, and Imdril find the Moonlit King pinned under rubble. He has never been more vulnerable than he is now. He orders Mirian to help him out so he can help fight the devils. Danger tells Mirian to just kill him, but Mirian just can’t do it. He wants to live. They start helping the king out from under the rubble.   Indigo watches in awe as Emerline summons an army of undead and goes to fight the devils. More allies appear to fight. The resistance rides into town led by Tillon, with Braes flying overhead. Samson appears with a new druidic circle he made himself, the Circle of Dreams, whose members are the reincarnated denizens of Vaerand. Demi Berry and the bards of New Bard’s Haven use their music to inspire everyone fighting for good. And last but not least, Cerulean and Ivory fly together to fight the devils.   Daryl and Cole see this when they get to the material plane in astral form, but Cole feels the tug to his body and follows it. Daryl decides to follow him. They find the four shadow dragons scrapping over the unconscious form of Virescent at the pits. One of them holds Cole’s body in his hand. Birinj. He’s fallen to the shadows too. Cole’s mind is returning, but Daryl still has to tell him not to go back to his body. Instead, he dives into the pit and tries to lift the orb out to draw the dragons to Citadel. It’s slow going, an astral form can barely pick up solid objects. Cole tries to help, but his hands are full of that sand. Daryl thinks he’s seen that stuff before, or at least a single grain of it. He tells Cole to return to his body. He does and opens his hand, full of 24-Carat Stars. All four shadow dragons are freed.   Mirian pulls the last piece of rubble off of Ludomir. He’s not at all thankful for it and begins to float away. Danger decides against this and grabs him, bringing him back to the ground. Ludomir attacks.   A last batch of allies arrives, Leonis and all three orders of paladins. He opens his eyes, clear, golden, and uses a scroll to open a portal for the Gold, Silver, Red, and Bronze Dragons to fly through. Daryl follows. He dives down to the fight between the Queen of Night and Magic and the large devil named Bel. Daryl uses magic to weaken the queen, Sarastra, until Bel has nearly killed her. Only then does he take in the rest of the battle.   They’re losing. Indigo sees it firsthand. The undead are many, but they are just so much weaker than the devils. All of their allies are struggling to do much of anything. It won’t be enough. Daryl is contacted via sending by Hogarth. He stands at the front gate of Citadel Keep with his scroll. He tells Daryl it might be time to break the glass.   Mirian, Danger, and Imdril corner Ludomir. Mirian comes at him with his swords, but can’t bring himself to finish it. Ludmir laughs at him, the undead man afraid to die. Danger and Imdril tell him to do it.   Hogarth tells Daryl the scroll is for a wish spell. They only get one though. Daryl tells him to wish for all of the devils to be sent back to The Nine Hells. Hogarth makes the wish, the skies go white, for a moment everyone goes deaf, and then, when everything returns to normal, the devils are simply gone.   It’s so quiet for Mirian without the battle. And if that’s over, there’s no pretending this is about saving the country. This moment, right now, is about him and Ludomir. He drives his rapiers into Ludomir’s chest and kills the Moonlit King. Fey energies burst from him, bathing everything in moonlight. Mirian has completed the mission he came back from the dead for.   Before Daryl can think what to do next, he’s ripped back to his physical body. He opens his eyes and sees Gith. Looking over him. The yellow man turns and speaks in common with someone else. Someone else playing catch with a baby dragon. A dragon unlike any of the other ten.